Download or read book Anti GenetiX written by Derrick A. Purdue and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-01 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title was first published in 2000: The development of genetically-modified foods has given rise to much widespread and heated debate on the possible consequences - both positive and negative - of this new technology. This book not only addresses the broad issues involved (outlining the connections between gene patenting and biotechnology and their impact on international relations), but also, for the first time, examines the social movement emerging against GM food. Anti-GenetiX traces this movement from its emergence and shows how and why it expanded from a small expert concern to the current huge political uproar. It explores the contribution this movement makes to shaping global civil society and argues that such global social movements will become increasingly common in the global age.
Download or read book Resources for Anti genetix Action written by and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 12 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Information about direct action against genetic engineering. Listing of names and addresses of organizations, print resources, and ideas for community action."-- ZAPP zine catalog.j
Download or read book The Handbook of Genetics Society written by Paul Atkinson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-07-02 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An authoritative Handbook which offers a discussion of the social, political, ethical and economic consequences and implications of the new bio-sciences. The Handbook takes an interdisciplinary approach providing a synoptic overview of contemporary international social science research on genetics, genomics and the new life sciences. It brings together leading scholars with expertise across a wide-ranging spectrum of research fields related to the production, use, commercialisation and regulation of genetics knowledge. The Handbook is structured into seven cross-cutting themes in contemporary social science research on genetics with introductions written by internationally renowned section editors who take an interdisciplinary approach to offer fresh insights on recent developments and issues in often controversial fields of study. The Handbook explores local and global issues and critically approaches a wide range of public and policy questions, providing an invaluable reference source to a wide variety of researchers, academics and policy makers.
Download or read book Redesigning Life written by Brian Tokar and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2001-02-14 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New discoveries in biotechnology are often touted as the answer to many contemporary problems. Genetic engineering, animal cloning, and reproductive technologies are promoted as the keys to a brighter future, while genetic engineers promise more productive agriculture, medical miracles, and solutions to environmental problems. But increasing numbers of farmers, scientists, and concerned citizens disagree. There is growing evidence that genetically engineered foods are hazardous to our health and to the environment. Farmers all over the world are encountering an increasingly monopolized seed and agrichemical industry. Animal cloning and human genetic engineering raise troubling ethical questions and genes from plants, animals, and humans have become objects to be bought, sold, and patented by private interests. Worldwide resistance to genetic engineering and other biotechnologies has brought these issues to the forefront of public controversy. Contributors include Beth Burrows (Edmonds Institute), Mitchel Cohen (freelance writer and activist, US), Martha Crouch (formerly of Indiana University), Marcy Darnovsky (Sonoma State University), Michael Dorsey (environmental justice activist), Steve Emmott (Green delegation to the European Parliament), Alix Fano (Campaign for Responsible Transplantation, NY), Jennifer Ferrara (freelance writer, CA), Chaia Heller (Institute for Social Ecology, VT), David King (GenEthics News, UK), Jack Kloppenburg (University of Wisconsin), Orin Langelle (Native Forest Network), Zoë C. Meleo-Erwin (activist and researcher, PA), Barbara Katz Rothman (City University of New York), Sonja Schmitz (doctoral candidate, University of Vermont), Thomas G. Schweiger (Greenpeace International), Sarah Sexton (The Corner House, UK), Robin Seydel (La Montañita Food Co-op, NM), Hope Shand (Rural Advancement Foundation International, Canada), Lucy Sharratt (Sierra Club of Canada), Vandana Shiva (Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, India), Ricarda Steinbrecher (Econexus, UK), Victoria Tauli-Corpuz (Tebtebba Foundation, Philippines), Jim Thomas (Greenpeace UK), Brian Tokar, Kimberly Wilson (Greenpeace USA).
Download or read book Seeds of Science written by Mark Lynas and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-04-05 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Mark Lynas is a saint' Sunday Times 'Fluent, persuasive and surely right.' Evening Standard Mark Lynas was one of the original GM field wreckers. Back in the 1990s – working undercover with his colleagues in the environmental movement – he would descend on trial sites of genetically modified crops at night and hack them to pieces. Two decades later, most people around the world – from New York to China – still think that 'GMO' foods are bad for their health or likely to damage the environment. But Mark has changed his mind. This book explains why. In 2013, in a world-famous recantation speech, Mark apologised for having destroyed GM crops. He spent the subsequent years touring Africa and Asia, and working with plant scientists who are using this technology to help smallholder farmers in developing countries cope better with pests, diseases and droughts. This book lifts the lid on the anti-GMO craze and shows how science was left by the wayside as a wave of public hysteria swept the world. Mark takes us back to the origins of the technology and introduces the scientific pioneers who invented it. He explains what led him to question his earlier assumptions about GM food, and talks to both sides of this fractious debate to see what still motivates worldwide opposition today. In the process he asks – and answers – the killer question: how did we all get it so wrong on GMOs? 'An important contribution to an issue with enormous potential for benefiting humanity.' Stephen Pinker 'I warmly recommend it.' Philip Pullman
Download or read book Looking to the Future written by Derek Hodson and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-10-25 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In advocating an action-oriented and issues-based curriculum, this book takes the position that a major, but shamefully neglected, goal of science and technology education is to equip students with the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values to confront the complex and often ill-defined socioscientific issues they encounter in daily life as citizens in an increasingly technology-dominated world carefully, critically, confidently and responsibly. In outlining proposals for addressing socioscientific issues through a curriculum organized in terms of four increasingly sophisticated levels of consideration, the author adopts a highly critical and politicized stance towards the norms and values that underpin both scientific and technological development and contemporary scientific, engineering and medical practice, criticizes mainstream STS and STSE education for adopting a superficial, politically naïve and, hence, educationally ineffective approach to consideration of socioscientific issues, takes the view that environmental problems are social problems occasioned by the values that underpin the ways in which we choose to live, and urges teachers to encourage students to reach their own views through debate and argument about where they stand on major socioscientific issues, including the moral-ethical issues they often raise. More controversially, the author argues that if students are to become responsible and politically active citizens, the curriculum needs to provide opportunities for them to experience and learn from sociopolitical action. The relative merits of direct and indirect action are addressed, notions of learning about action, learning through action and learning from action are developed, and a case is made for compiling a user-friendly database reflecting on both successful and less successful action-oriented curriculum initiatives. Finally, the book considers some of the important teacher education issues raised by this radically new approach to teaching and learning science and technology. The book is intended primarily for teachers and student teachers of science, technology and environmental education, graduate students and researchers in education, teacher educators, curriculum developers and those responsible for educational policy. The author is Emeritus Professor of Science Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (University of Toronto), Adjunct Professor of Science Education at the University of Auckland and Visiting Professor of Science Education at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include considerations in the history, philosophy and sociology of science and their implications for science and technology education, STSE education and the politicization of both students and teachers, science curriculum history, multicultural and antiracist education, and teacher education via action research.
Download or read book The Politics of Unsustainability written by Ingolfur Bluhdorn and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-18 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two decades after its launch by the UN Brundtland Commission, the paradigm of sustainability seems to have reached its limits. Whilst the concept figures more prominently in public debate and policy making than ever before, the ecological footprint of advanced liberal consumer societies continues to grow, and the forceful economic development of countries such as China and India reinforces concerns that the world is moving further away from, rather than closer towards the ideal of sustainability. Given the proven failure of ecological modernisation strategies to secure sustainability, the traditional question "How may our established lifestyles and socio-economic practices be made more sustainable?" needs to be supplemented by a second, equally important, question: "How do advanced modern consumer democracies try and manage to sustain what is known to be unsustainable?" Put differently, traditional research into the politics of sustainability needs to be supplemented by a new line of research into the politics of unsustainability. Exploring the recent transformation of eco-political discourses and a variety of ways in which the unfolding paradox of sustaining the unsustainable is being managed, the present volume pioneers this new research agenda. This book was previously published as a special issue of Environmental Politics.
Download or read book What s the Beef written by Christopher Ansell and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines European food safety regulation at the national, European, and international levels as a case of "contested governance," illustrating issues of institutional trust and legitimacy.
Download or read book Stalinist Genetics written by Dmitri Stanchevici and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stalinist Genetics focuses on the rhetoric of T. D. Lysenko, the founder of an agrobiological doctrine (Lysenkoism) in the Stalinist Soviet Union. Using not only scientific but also political and ideological arguments, Lysenko achieved an official ban on Soviet Mendelian genetics. Though the ban was brief and Lysenkoism, as a leading biological doctrine, was eventually deposed in favor of Mendelism, Lysenkoism remains a paradigmatic example of pernicious political interference in science. In this study, the critical orientation for reading Lysenko's major speeches is constitutional rhetoric. It combines Kenneth Burke's dialectic of constitutions and rhetoric of the subject. Painting a nuanced picture of intellectual, economic, ideological, and political life in the Soviet Union of the 1930s and 1940s, the book demonstrates how the rhetorics of Lysenkoism and Mendelism interacted with Stalinist culture in the fight for dominating Soviet science. The reader will learn how Lysenko's constitutional rhetoric created a space where scientific terms transformed into political and ideological ones, and vice versa. The book also shows how, in a dialectical flip, the Lysenkoist rhetoric eventually turned from tool to master. Contrary to Lysenko's intentions, his language gave his opponents, Soviet Mendelians, grounds on which to defend their science and criticize Lysenkoism. Stanchevici forcefully reasserts the blurriness of the boundaries between science and politics, and argues that scientific language reveals more plasticity and adaptability to the political situation than has hitherto been assumed. Intended Audience: Scholars in rhetoric, history, and philosophy of science; graduate or upper-division undergraduate course in the rhetoric of science or technical communication.
Download or read book The Fight Over Food written by Wynne Wright and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-06-17 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One problem with the food system is that price is the bottom line rather than having the bottom line be land stewardship, an appreciation for the environmental and social value of small-scale family farms, or for organically grown produce.” —Interview with farmer in Skagit County, Washington For much of the later twentieth century, food has been abundant and convenient for most residents of advanced industrial societies. The luxury of taking the safety and dependability of food for granted pushed it to the back burner in the consciousness of many. Increasingly, however, this once taken-for-granted food system is coming under question on issues such as the humane treatment of animals, genetically engineered foods, and social and environmental justice. Many consumers are no longer content with buying into the mainstream, commodity-driven food market on which they once depended. Resistance has emerged in diverse forms, from protests at the opening of McDonald’s restaurants worldwide to ever-greater interest in alternatives, such as CSAs (community-supported agriculture), fair trade, and organic foods. The food system is increasingly becoming an arena of struggle that reflects larger changes in societal values and norms, as expectations are moving beyond the desire for affordable, convenient foods to a need for healthy and environmentally sound alternatives. In this book, leading scholars and scholar-activists provide case studies that illuminate the complexities and contradictions that surround the emergence of a “new day” in agriculture. The essays found in The Fight Over Food analyze and evaluate both the theoretical and historical contexts of the agrifood system and the ways in which trends of individual action and collective activity have led to an “accumulation of resistance” that greatly affects the mainstream market of food production. The overarching theme that integrates the case studies is the idea of human agency and the ways in which people purposefully and creatively generate new forms of action or resistance to facilitate social changes within the structure of predominant cultural norms. Together these studies examine whether these combined efforts will have the strength to create significant and enduring transformations in the food system.
Download or read book Engineering Trouble written by Rachel A. Schurman and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003-10-06 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Talk of genetically engineered organisms (GEOs) has moved from the hushed corridors of life science corporations to the front pages of major newspapers. This book examines these issues from the diverse perspectives of sociology, geography, law environmental studies and political science.
Download or read book Struggles for an Alternative Globalization written by Gwyn Williams and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-28 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through an anthropological study of a highly influential movement of French 'alterglobalization' activists, this book offers an ethnographic window onto the global movement against corporate capitalism and the neoliberal policies of the WTO. Based on extensive fieldwork on the Larzac plateau in rural southern France, it explores the politics of protest in which activists engage. It examines their resistance to various forms of power, their organization of struggle, their attempts to live out their ideals in daily life, and their challenges to conventional understandings of politics, democracy, economics, morality and globalization. By subjecting power and resistance to ethnographic study rather than adopting them as abstract categories of analysis, this volume makes an important contribution to theoretical debates on globalization, domination and resistance. It will be of interest not only to anthropologists and scholars of social movements, but also to sociologists and political scientists, as well as to activists themselves.
Download or read book Seed Activism written by Karine E. Peschard and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How lawsuits around intellectual property in Brazil and India are impacting the patentability of plants and seeds, farmers’ rights, and the public interest. Over the past decade, legal challenges have arisen in the Global South over patents on genetically modified crops. In this ethnographic study, Karine E. Peschard explores the effects of these disputes on people’s lives, while uncovering the role of power—material, institutional, and discursive—in shaping laws and legal systems. The expansion of corporate intellectual property (IP), she shows, negatively impacts farmers’ rights and, by extension, the right to food, since small farms produce the bulk of food for domestic consumption. Peschard sees emerging a new legal common sense concerning the patentability of plant-related inventions, as well as a balance among IP, farmers’ rights, and the public interest. Peschard examines the strengthening of IP regimes for plant varieties, the consolidation of the global biotech industry, the erosion of agrobiodiversity, and farmers’ dispossession. She shows how litigants question the legality of patents and private IP systems implemented by Monsanto for royalties on three genetically modified crop varieties, Roundup Ready soybean in Brazil and Bt cotton and Bt eggplant in India. Peschard argues that these private IP systems have rendered moot domestic legislation on plant variety protection and farmers’ rights. This unprecedented level of corporate concentration in such a vital sector raises concerns over the erosion of agricultural biodiversity, farmers’ rights and livelihoods, food security, and, ultimately, the merits of extending IP rights to higher life forms such as plants.
Download or read book Biotechnology and Communication written by Sandra Braman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-04-26 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the convergence of biotechnology and communication systems and explores how this convergence directly influences our understanding of the nature of communication. Editor Sandra Braman brings together scholars to examine this convergence in three areas: genetic information and "facticity"; social issues and implications; and the economic and legal issues raised by the production and ownership of information. The work highlights the sophisticated processes taking place as biotechnology and information technology systems continue to evolve. The chapters in this book approach the complex history of this topic and the issues it raises from a number of directions. It begins by examining the shared features and spaces of biotechnology and digital information technologies as meta-technologies--qualitatively distinct from both the tools first used in the premodern era and the industrial technologies that characterized modernity. Next, the book explores what is and is not useful in treating the types of information processed by the two meta-technologies through a shared conceptual lens and looks at issues raised by the ownership of genetic and digital information. The final chapters are concerned with relationships between information and power. Defining a future research agenda for communication scholarship, this work is beneficial to scholars and students in science communication, cultural studies, information technologies, and sociology.
Download or read book The Environment written by Philip W. Sutton and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-29 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How are human societies changing the global environment? Is sustainable development really possible? Can environmental risks be avoided? Is our experience of nature changing? This book shows how questions about the environment cannot be properly answered without taking a sociological approach. It provides a comprehensive guide to the ways in which sociologists have responded to the challenge of environmental issues as diverse as global warming, ozone depletion, biodiversity loss and marine pollution. It also covers sociological ideas such as risk, interpretations of nature, environmental realism, ecological modernization and globalization. Environmentalism and green politics are also introduced. Unlike many other texts in the field, the book takes a long-term view, locating environmental dilemmas within the context of social development and globalization. The Environment: A Sociological Introduction is unique in presenting environmental issues at an introductory level that assumes no specialist knowledge on the part of readers. The book is written in a remarkably clear and accessible style, and uses a rich range of empirical examples from across the globe to illustrate key debates. A carefully assembled glossary and annotated further reading suggestions also help to bring ideas to life. The book will be a valuable resource for students in a range of disciplines, including sociology, geography and the environmental sciences, but also for anyone who wants to get to grips with contemporary environmental debates.
Download or read book Eating in the Dark written by Kathleen Hart and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most Americans eat genetically modified food on a daily basis, but few of us are aware we’re eating something that has been altered. Meanwhile, consumers abroad refuse to buy our engineered crops; their groceries are labeled so that everyone knows if the contents have been modified. What’s going on here? Why does the U.S. government treat engineered foods so differently from the rest of the world? Eating in the Dark tells the story of how these new foods quietly entered America’s food supply. Kathleen Hart explores biotechnology’s real potential to enhance nutrition and cut farmers’ expenses. She also reveals the process by which American government agencies decided not to label genetically modified food, and not to require biotech companies to perform even basic safety tests on their products. Combining a balanced perspective with a sense of urgency, Eating in the Dark is a captivating and important story account of the science and politics propelling the genetic alteration of our food.
Download or read book Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering written by Facts On File, Incorporated and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides an overview, chronology of events, glossary and annotated bibliography on biotechnology and genetic engineering.
